


You Gotta Get Out

by Emby_M



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bisexual Micah Bell, Bonding Through Shared Trauma, Cajun Micah Bell, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Karen and Micah are friends, Kieran Sees the Good in People, Kieran as the Universal Observer, Past Child Abuse, Smoking, Trauma, Unexpected Emotional Depth for Micah
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 18:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20179129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emby_M/pseuds/Emby_M
Summary: That was the whole reason he didn't want to talk with Kieran. Because Kieran was too much like him.He sighs. Kieran starts to smoke, pressure light with his left hand, watching Micah all the while."So," Kieran says, "Y'wanna tell me about it?"Micah takes a deep breath. Looks at Kieran. The wide hat he usually wears has found itself in his lap. He looks strangely bare without it."Your daddy beat you too, didn't he?"-Kieran and Micah have their first conversation out in the pasture, once Kieran discovers Micah crying.





	You Gotta Get Out

**Author's Note:**

> Micah's multidimensional and complex in this one. Read on at your own risk.

It's been -- well, how long has it been? 

Seventeen years, maybe. Half his life, now.

Micah can't take the main camp today, not when he thinks about his life and his family and feels all the others closing in on him. Can't look at Karen, who sways close to Sean and places his hand on her waist in moments of rest, can't look over at Arthur who talks calm and collected to Dutch, who trusts him. Can't deal with hearing the open love Jack has for his parents, can't listen to John's laughter as Jack dances to his fiddling -- can't listen to a man who would sooner die than let one hair on his son's head be harmed. Can't listen to a man who wailed like a child when his son got a little scar on his chin.

So Micah finds a spot out in the pasture, sits, and lights consecutive cigarettes like he could burn away his feelings if he smoked enough.

He watches the horses. And he thinks his thoughts about the seventeen years it's been since he saw Tabby, since he saw Amos.

Damn them. Damn them -- they got to pick their lives. They had agency, could choose to leave. Amos had his own name -- he was not just another Micah -- and he had his own life. Last he had heard, he has a good home, a loving family. Children, even.

Micah wonders, laughing bitterly, if those kids know what it's like to be beat by their dad. If maybe the older one gets forgotten by their momma.

He wonders if anyone out there has gone through what he's gone through -- that isolation. Micah the second -- his father, his papa -- had turned everything against him. Turned Amos and his mother into his enemies. Turned the love of his black neighbors into jealousy and hatred because they were white, and therefore "better." Turned his refuge into a place he was barred from because Micah the second had threatened that poor family even though all they did was exist while black. Micah the second turned all those folks who weren't like them, who weren't white Cajuns, into people who voraciously wanted to eat whatever meager slice of the pie they got.

Ryoko, his old travelling partner, had beat the shit out of him a couple times for it -- and he'd never seen her angrier than any time he'd say something uncouth or even downright racist. But she took some of the jabs in stride because they were somewhat true, the way he could take jokes about Cajuns, but only some.

It made the Van der Lindes even harder to get along with -- all these non-white folk, and the only way Micah can relate is by ribbing into their cultures and races, just as everyone always ribbed into his culture.

His life -- his father and grandpere, his mother and brother -- none of it made it easy to get along with folks. And somehow he didn't want to. He doesn't want to sit with the others and pretend like he's an upstanding member of society, like he isn't dirty and nasty and always has been.

And he doesn't want to sit with others, and know them, and get to feel soft for them, because -- well --

People leave.

Even though what they had had been light, when he and Ryoko parted, he cried. He didn't want to say goodbye to something that good, didn't want to say goodbye to the gal who could match his energy and shoot with the best of 'em. But it was easier to be the one leaving than be the one left.

And when his mother had walked out, taking his little brother with her, leaving him behind with a daddy who never cared if he was sick or injured or in pain-

It's been seventeen years since his momma and his brother walked out of his life forever, and even now, cigarette smoke in his lungs and his daddy's guns in his holsters, he's crying for his momma.

The pasture's a good place. Quiet as can be. No one comes out here much -- not the folks who want to keep the scent of horse off of 'em. Micah smokes his cigarette until it starts to singe his fingers, and then lights the next one off that.

Crying all the while.

And then the person he wants to see the least comes by, holding a pail of water. Kieran.

People had asked. Why don't you bully Kieran.

Micah hadn't said, because the truth was odd.

Kieran is a whipping boy, through and through -- slight and tender and willowy, like a piece of overcooked asparagus -- in theory it would be easy to go and lash out at him, to make fun of him the same way he sees Bill doing (and what emotions that brings up are an entirely different matter, because Bill's eyes follow Kieran's shape in a way they don't Micah's, despite his best attempts.)

Kieran goes over to the horse's water trough, dumping the bucket over. Smiles when Baylock, the sweet thing, comes over and nuzzles at him. Baylock was nothing like his owner -- openly loving, friendly, sweet. Kieran spends a moment just patting those horses like they were his own, laughing when they all clump around him and prod at him with their noses.

And then Kieran is coming closer, bucket clasped against his belly, and he's starting to speak -- and it's the first time they'll speak, and Kieran's voice is so much more warbled than it should be--

And Micah looks up, with no time and no energy to wipe away the tears.

The kid jumps.

"Well, if it isn't bitty-baby-Duffy," he hisses. He doesn't want the kid here. Needs the kid to leave now. If he's mean enough- "Y'ain't never seen a grown man cry before?"

Kieran's mouth falls open, his eyes a-blinking. But there's no goddamn harshness in that look.

He needs Kieran to leave _now._

But Kieran just turns over the bucket and sits on it, right beside Micah on his right-hand side. The kid clutches in his knees, swallows lightly, clears his throat. And then --

"I've seen plenty of men cry," Kieran says, brows furrowing a little, "And- and a lot of folk feel better if they say something about it."

Micah stares at the boy. The man. The boy? Kieran, closer, is older than he seems. But younger too. Micah stares at Kieran like it'll make it clear what the fuck he's talking about.

Kieran clenches his jaw, fiddles with his thumbs, and waits for Micah.

Micah leans back more against the tree. Pulls out another cigarette and lights it, handing it off to Kieran.

Kieran doesn't take it at first, stuttering, "And- and no one would believe me, if- if I told em."

Micah shakes the cigarette again, until Kieran finally takes it, hoarsely murmuring, "And I wouldn't- wouldn't tell anyway."

"Aw shut up," Micah says, but it's not none of the heat it should to get the kid out of here. "You sold out that other gang under the littlest bit of pressure."

A little color comes to Kieran's cheeks and he clenches his hand against his knee hard. He starts to argue but-

Micah interrupts, "Nah, nah." He scuffs his boots against the spongy underbrush. It's funny being back in the humid part of the south. Feels like his feet know what to do. "I woulda sold 'em out too. Hell, I probably woulda killed them If they treated me the way they treated you."

Kieran's brow furrows again, his mouth quirking to the side. It's a strangely rabbit-like maneuver, and it's almost cute.

Of course, Micah had spoken a few times with Colm O'Driscoll. Micah will go to whoever pays enough, will give up enough information for the right amount of cash, but he had hated every moment with Colm.

Colm was...

Well, mostly it was that Colm was too similar to Micah the Second. Or even more similar to Micah the First, who had been the worse terror in his life, even if Micah the Second had warped him. Micah the First didn't care one lick if Micah the Third lived or died -- Micah the Second at least kept him from dying.

It was also that horrible gloating -- Being a Bell was no good thing when Colm was around, when he was so overeager to remind Micah of every flaw and fuck-up of his father and grandfather before him. Every goddamn time they saw each other, Colm had some new nasty part of Micah's past to remind him of.

The worst of it was the moment Colm started talking about Kieran.

Talking about Kieran like...

Like the kid was a plaything. Like a pet.

There was barely-contained lust there, and yet Colm didn't seem to know he was attracted to men. Colm acted like that was _normal,_ that Micah must share in the perverted, manipulative way Colm desired Kieran. That Kieran could be changed and loved and battered in any way Colm wanted, and there was no moral qualms about doing that.

That was the whole reason he didn't want to talk with Kieran. Because Kieran was too much like him.

He sighs. Kieran starts to smoke, pressure light with his left hand, watching Micah all the while.

"So," Kieran says, "Y'wanna tell me about it?"

Micah takes a deep breath. Looks at Kieran. The wide hat he usually wears has found itself in his lap. He looks strangely bare without it.

"Your daddy beat you too, didn't he?"

It's not the most elegant way to start a conversation, but it's easy enough. If Micah is wrong -- and he doesn't think he's wrong -- then Kieran can just storm away in a huff.

Micah hopes he's wrong. That his sense for that sort of thing was so tarnished that this kid was just shy, or had only just been passively subjected to Colm-  
Kieran is looking at him with big eyes. Lips parting, like words might come.

And then his gaze drops. And he murmurs, "It was my momma."

Dammit.

Everyone knew Micah Bell got the shit beat out of him daily. The Pinkertons knew, the gangs they ran with and ran against knew, every goddamn innkeeper in the country knew.

But it's one thing for people to know, or for Micah to drop reference to it in passing the same way he'd jibe about Saint Denis or being Cajun, and telling someone who understands.

Kieran's eyes raise back up, and he leans forward a little, into Micah's space. "You can tell?"

Micah wants to cry again. "Course I can, kiddo," he says, leaning forward. The space between them is a little more private now. "All of us abused little fuckers look the same."

He points out towards main camp. He can see Karen and Sean, and he can see Hosea and Dutch talking, and he can see Arthur.

"You see it out there in the camp. Which of 'em had their own kin, their own flesh and blood, the people they trusted, beat 'em near to death."

There's only one of them over there, of the people Micah can see. And Micah wants to scratch his eyes out about it, because it's Morgan, and it's always been Morgan.

"They's all broken in their own ways," Micah explains, watching Arthur -- who should be like him, ill-fit and volatile -- be greeted and welcomed into camp, "But us little whipping boys? Well."

Kieran... nods, after a moment. More certain.

"I was crying for my momma," Micah says, barking a bitter laugh. "I'm a grown man and it's been nearly twenty years but I can't help but cry on this day."

Kieran's weak hand is on his knee. "Did she die?"

Micah sneers, barking another harsh laugh. "I wish she had. She left and took my brother with her."

Kieran retracts the hand, but stays leaned forward. The quiet, open way he's listening to Micah's story feels weird.

"And she left me alone with my daddy and my grandpa -- like she forgot about me, forgot that I got beat just the same as her, like she forgot that our house was just as much a terror to me as it was to her and Amos."

Micah winces and blinks his eyes, trying not to cry again -- there's something more shameful about beginning to cry around someone, rather than having them discover it.

"You have to feel that too, don't you? The way that makes you paranoid. The way you can no longer connect with anyone the same way, the way you're always just -- broken, ill-fitting with all those folks whose parents loved them. The way you feel so nervous because -- if my momma didn't protect me, why would any of these fuckers?"

His breath is coming too ragged, too much like a sob, and his sinuses are burning. Stop, he wills himself, _stop_.

But then Kieran's hand that he holds too open, the hand that trembled fine the way the other didn't, settles back on his knee. And instead of tears or anxiety or fear on Kieran's face, Micah finds the boy is looking at him even, brow set and eyes clear. He nods.

"I ain't- never felt like I could love someone right," Micah explains. "I- I got this gal, this friend, somewhere out in the country. And I love her, and it's simple, but it ain't, too. I love her but I can't love her deep enough, and she don't love me deep enough, you know?" 

That was was true. He loves Ryo. Loves her like crazy. But it was too easy with Ryo, and there was nothing for a gal so much younger, not with a man like him. But leaving had been painful -- and he had known that Ryo let him do the leaving because she knew him, but...

"And I love Karen, we get along just swimmingly, in another universe I would've wifed her up, but- but she's with Sean now, and I ain't about to say, 'hey, it's me, your friend! Leave your stupid boyfriend who completes you -- I know cause I can see it in your eyes every time you talk to him -- and come hang out with me because I'm lonely!'"

Karen really is his best friend. She gets him in a way most don't. She's gorgeous, of course, they're well matched sex-wise, and she's just as much a horndog as he is, but there's this real closeness between them that makes him smile each time he thinks of it. She touches him kind, and he touches her kind too.

Kieran laughs a little, cocks his head. "Well, at least you don't have to worry about Sean. I know he likes Miss Karen a lot."

"Oh please," Micah scoffs, "Everyone knows that."

Kieran grins, his nose wrinkling a little, "Oh sure, but you didn't get woken up from a nap to him screamin' in Gaelic about how _she picked me!? Kieran, Kieran, she picked **me**?!_"

Micah laughs, despite himself. He doesn't really find the whole Sean thing funny, not really -- Sean's an idiot, and he's definitely a virgin, and at times he's way too pushy and way too heterosexual -- but he can't possibly complain when Karen walks around camp whistling like there was nothing wrong in the world at all. 

"He loves her that much, huh," Micah says.

"You don't know the half of it," Kieran laughs, drumming his fingers against Micah's knee, "I've had to listen to him talk so much about her -- and had to listen to Mallaidh talk mean about her in turn, which Sean always has to retort-"

"Molly's been talkin mean about Karen?" The urge to go find Molly and acquaint her with his hunting knife is quite strong. 

"Mm, sorta," Kieran says. "But Sean's always there to defend Karen so. And it's not like Miss Karen really needs it -- Mallaidh never attempts to say much bad about her if Karen's there. Specially since last time she nearly got her teeth knocked in."

"That's my girl," Micah grins.

Kieran laughs -- it's kind of a nice sound, even though it's hardly a dignified laugh. Micah leans back against the tree again. 

"And-" Micah starts, looking at Kieran's profile -- strangely handsome, under the layer of horse and sweat (the same can be said for himself, can't it?) -- "And I went and did something as stupid as falling for a feller in camp."

And here, Kieran, again, perks. 

This is another moment where Micah might have been wrong.

It's -- not likely, but possible, that Kieran is hetero. But the man exudes such an energy -- why, exactly, Micah couldn't put his finger on -- that he likes men.

Micah thinks about the man he's fallen for, solid and robust. Charmingly bearded, a little awkward, but _kind_ above all. 

His stomach curdles thinking of how that man moves away from him any time Micah tries to get close, how he's always on guard when they talk, the two of 'em.

"He hates me, I know it," Micah says, spitting the words bitterly, "Would strike me down like Sodom and Gomorrah if he had the chance."

Very quietly, Kieran squeaks, "He?"

Micah turns a grinning sneer to Kieran, waggling his jaw. "Yeah, _he_ \-- I ain't picky on gender."

Kieran puts up his hands, the left trembling a little harder where the right is steady. "No, no issues, I just- I didn't expect you to also be into gents."

Micah shrugs. At least he's still sharp on that front.

Kieran leans forward again, resting his fingers lightly on Micah's knees. He steals a glance out to camp.

"It's- it's not Arthur, is it?"

The laughs startles even Micah. But it's a proper guffaw, sends a bird that was perched above them skittering off. A cackle, even, the way it rattles against his back teeth. 

"Ew, fuckin' gross!" He laughs, shaking his hands like he was trying to clear the idea out of sand or water or something, "Nah, nah, nah!" 

Kieran's eyebrows are about halfway up his tall forehead, his hands curled against his chest like Micah had singed him. But he kind of smiles, too -- it's not a terrified look. 

Why was this kid not that wary of him?

Everyone was wary of him.

Rightly so. Micah Bell was the most lethal man in thirteen states.

But it chafes at him sometimes. No one gets close, because he's dangerous, and then no one will look at him as a person, just as another Micah Bell.

"Nah, and-" Micah says, after a moment, slapping his palms against his knees, "I'm not about to be their fourth. He's got a good thing going with the Marstons -- he is a Marston, frankly."

"Yeah," Kieran says, "Hosea and I were talking about that. But-" and here he leans forward a little bit, lacing his hands over his knees, "But you're always... you're always saying things to Missus Abigail. I thought -- maybe you like her."

Ah. Abigail.

Micah puckers his mouth, spares a glance back at camp.

"I mean, I like Abigail fine but-" Micah settles his palms against his thighs, "But it's mostly to piss off Morgan."

That was mostly true anyway. It really was funny to see Morgan quietly say to Abigail that 'if Micah bothers you again, you come and tell me', watch his expression darken and his lip curl when Micah insinuates taking over fatherhood of Jack.

(Micah doesn't think about how terrified he would be of being anyone's father, much less little Jack -- Jack who is a brain, and who trusts, and who has never been hit by an adult he trusts in his life.)

And Micah has kind of stopped anyway, because Abigail, who was altogether more polite than she had rights to be, had sat him down and asked the damning question, which was if he was doing it just to get the attention of-

"And she's good friends with the man I'm in love with," he says, remembering how her hands folded over a skein of yarn she would later take to him and wind the ball of his hands as he chewed on the end of a cigarette, "A man who's too busy looking at _you_ to notice I'm lookin at _him_."

Kieran's eyes widen.

"Bill?" he says, quietly. 

"Yes," Micah says, like Kieran was slow. But honestly, it was... oddly fulfilling to have him guess.

Kieran rests his elbows on his knees and scratches at his scruffy beard, pouting. His nose twitches again.

"I feel like that makes sense," he finally says after a moment, looking right into Micah's eyes, "I think you two might be good for each other."

...?

Micah scoffs. Ignores the honest heat that works its way up his throat and burns in his sinuses like he might cry again. "Cause we're both mean bastards?" 

Kieran shrugs. Laces his fingers in front of his knees again. "No," he says, cocking his head, "No, you fellers aren't - you're not REALLY mean. I mean, ya are, I wouldn't want to be on the other side of a bounty or in a fight with you but - I can feel the same kinda loneliness from you two."

Micah wants to punch his own teeth in.

Kieran doesn't say anything more, which Micah counts as a small blessing. Instead, he just sits and smokes the cigarette. Micah is almost impressed -- he packs his cigarettes strong and Kieran is smoking it like it was nothing.

Micah sighs. Scrubs at his face, his mustache that hides a face too damn similar to his daddy's to be comfortable, a face that he stomped out in puddles of rainwater before his mustache grew in thick and bushy and disrupting the too-familiar lines of his own face. 

There was a little of his momma in there too - her gray gray eyes, the hairline, the lips. 

It sings in his chest the words 'you're not really mean'.

No one had ever said that to him. And it was wrong, a little, Micah is mean, that's his whole _thing_, but - 

But?

He now wonders about Kieran. What his family was like, if he had any friends. Looks to the man who could be a boy who smokes his strong cigarettes without flinching, who, at rest, looks like he's been on this Earth too long, eyes focused far away and a fragility in the set of his shoulders.

The questions Micah wants to ask settle. About horses, about loving men, about the oddly knowing way Kieran holds himself. About why his young face looks so old. Why he can see what others don't.

And what Micah is planning, what allegiances he's made and what information he has sold or was coerced into selling, bubbles forth.

Not all of it. Not even most of it. But in the lascivious grin of Colm O'Driscoll, the blank bureaucratic fraces of the Pinkertons, the gnashing teeth of the Grays - how there was no space for mercy for one sweet kid -

And around his cigarette Micah hisses, "You gotta get out of this gang."

Kieran looks up slow, exhaling lazy smoke. 

Micah continues, the words slipping from his mouth. "You gotta get out now. Leave this behind. It all looks good, and it is, but it's going to all blow up soon."

Kieran stares. Blinks.

For a moment, Kieran's mouth opens. He takes a breath like he might say something, might refute it.

And then he blinks, shuts his mouth again. Stares at where his boot scuffs spongy earth. "Um," he murmurs, "I'm not doubting you, Mister Bell, but-"

And he looks to the camp, once, briefly.

Micah can see the way he looks at that camp. How it has become precious to him. 

Micah hates that he knows what that feels like. For the first time in his life, these people are close to him. Connected to him. He is trusted, mostly, and loved, occasionally, and it was all going to tear itself apart, and it was Micah's doing.

"It's the only place I got."

Micah's heart drops into his fucking stomach and splashes around in the stomach acid like a dog in a lake.

There's the urge to stand. To tell on himself, explain he ratted the gang out, brought on this kind of chaos because Micah Bell, every Micah Bell who had been born a criminal, tended to his own needs and wants and desires before anything else. To tell them all he did it because he had to destroy their happiness. In his thirty-four years there had never been a more loving, welcoming gang, and he _hated it._

There's the urge to pick up Kieran, enact some sort of gut-turning violence on him just to see himself reflected, tired and scared and weak, in the kid's expression. To remove that even, nonjudgement from his gaze and replace it with broken fear.

There is the urge to reach out and kiss the kid -- not because he's attracted to him, but to soothe his nerves the way he always has with other people's bodies. To make Bill burn with jealousy and maybe- even- reassure a kid who just looks like he needs to be touched gently, like a skittish horse. Like Micah needs.

Micah does none of it.

Just takes a drag of his cigarette, smoking beside Kieran in silence.

When Kieran finishes his cigarette, he stubs out the butt on the spongy sod of the South, the only terrain Micah's feet know how to handle. Stands, groaning in pain, rubbing his knees. Stretches his back, picks up the bucket he was sitting on, and settles his hat back on his head.

"I should get back to work," Kieran says.

Micah reaches up, unbidden, and holds out his hand.

He almost retracts it -- realizes he'd reached up so Kieran could hold his hand, show him some sort of kindness, and Kieran would be dumb enough to do it, but -

Kieran is there. And Kieran holds his hand, lightly, and squeezes his fingers, gently.

Smiles, too, a little soft smile.

"It's alright," and Kieran pauses, the smile falling for a moment. But it redoubles, the sweetest and kindest look in the kid's eyes, when he says, "Micah."

Micah lets go of his hand. Drops it to his side. Nods.

Kieran nods too, a quiet _see-you-later_.

Micah sits back against the tree, and lights another cigarette.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated.


End file.
